Venezuela poll shows tight race for Chavez

Source: Reuters

A new poll shows Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez only slightly ahead of challenger Henrique Capriles in the October 7 presidential election, welcome news for the opposition following numerous surveys showing Chavez with a wide lead.

The leftist former soldier is seeking re-election for a third term to extend his self-styled socialist revolution, and he has boosted his public appearances as his health seems to be recovering from a cancer diagnosed last year.

Capriles is seeking to tap into pent-up frustration among the OPEC nation's voters who are weary of high crime, soaring prices and a continuing wave of nationalizations.

Respected pollster Consultores 21 said its most recent survey shows Chavez holding a 3.4 percentage point lead over Capriles in contrast to the double-digit lead that other public opinion groups have given Chavez in recent surveys.

DECIDE YOUR OWN FRIENDS PEOPLE, NOT WHO A POLITICIAN SAYS IS YOUR FRIEND. USE YOUR OWN MINDS, DON'T LET THEM USE YOUR MIND. BECAUSE THEY WILL MAKE YOU DO WHAT YOU DONT WANT TO DO. THIS IS HISTORY AND THE WORLD THAT SAY THIS.

7. These polls are fascinating. I doubt Capriles gained 17 points in a month.

I think that the Datanalisis poll was just scoffed at by Capriles supporters. It was, after all, before Capriles was a registered candidate and before he started campaigning actively in all of the big cities.

Analysts have said part of the reason for the discrepancy between the Datanalisis and Consultores 21 figures is that the former indicates 28.7 percent of voters are undecided - a surprisingly high figure given the country's polarized politics.

The Consultores 21 poll numbers suggest that a maximum of only 7.5 percent of the country's voters are undecided.

10. Well, this means that Chavez has gained 2.4 points since March, according to Consultores 21

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is locked in a statistical tie with his rival Henrique Capriles Radonski seven months before presidential elections, according to a poll by Consultores 21.

Chavez was favored by 46 percent of those surveyed compared with 45 percent for Capriles, said Saul Cabrera, vice president of the Caracas-based pollster. Another 9 percent of the 2,000 people polled between March 3 and 13 were undecided, Cabrera said today in an interview.

But, hey, it's getting closer to the election and Rotters is among the top Chavez bashers that dare to parade as reliable news organizations. So they have a motive to pick out the least reliable poll and headline it, now. They fervently with all their dark little hearts and using every low trick that corporate journalism school has taught them, want Chavez defeated. And, as we have seen before on many events that our transglobal corporate rulers and war profiteers want to come true, they start writing their "narratives" long before things happen, in order to help make things go their way. Never forget the exit polls in 2004, which the "respected" polling firm, Edison-Mitofsky, CHANGED to fit Diebold's and Karl Rove's results, subsequently hiding the real data that said that Bush/Cheney HAD LOST.

Polls can be and are manipulated, and corporate 'news' organization can and do pull words like "respected" ("Respected pollster Consultores 21...") out of their hats, when they are hot to manipulate impressions--encourage some voters, discourage others, give rightwing politicians and their campaign organizations a boost, discourage leftists, etc. Indeed, they are notorious for manipulating the "news" to favor the 1%.

If the corpo-fascist press is to be believed, Chavez isn't really the president of Venezuela. He just somehow got the office by osmosis or a coup or something. On the last presidential election in Venezuela, all we heard about from the corpo-fascist press was the rightwing "talking points," which made Chavez's huge victory in that election seem totally baffling. Venezuelans voted, in huge numbers, for an incompetent, buffoon dictator? Wow, what stupid voters they must be!

So their articles about their "great white hope" (Capriles), at this point, need to be taken with a grain of salt. These 'news' sources always have an agenda. They are always manipulating and propagandizing their 'news' 'consumers.' But never more so than when a Leftist is running for election in Latin America. Look at their predictions for Leftist Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and for Leftist Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, for instance--two of the most popular presidents in LatAm. Basically, unelectable, according to the unreliable corpo-fascist press and their "respected" pollsters. But the voters of LatAm--the poor, anonymous, unrespected people at the bottom--keep blowing these corpo-fascist predictions and hopes all to smithereens by voting for leaders whom they know will do "the will of the people." Latin Americans have done their civic homework on honest elections--which we haven't done here--so the poor majority has a chance against the corporate press and its chosen fascist leaders and their non-stop brainwashing.

So we will see if this happens once again, in Venezuela--Rotters and brethren, and their "respected" pollsters, saying it's close, and it not being close at all. It is very difficult to make predictions with the corporate 'news' so utterly screwed up, there and here.

Here's an excellent article on the machinations of the corporate 'news' on Chavez/Capriles--from the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), called "Manufacturing Contempt," by Keane Bhatt. A must read for understanding just how twisted articles like the above OP from Rotters are: